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Comment by charlesju | Hacker News Reader

1. I really like Singapore's solution to welfare, it's called work-fare. Singapore only gives the homeless help if they are willing to put in work doing -- something, anything. It could be as simple as carrying a brick from one side to another for an hour. The simple fact that they have to earn their meals negates the sour taste of hand outs and yet still allows for the homeless to have a route to take to get back on their feet.

2. As a secondary note, while welfare is unfortunate, what is more unfortunate is that we spend more money on murderers than those with mental illnesses roaming our streets. It is a twisted system where doing a crime towards society is given more monetary reward than simply not being able to fit in.

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I'm not saying you're right or wrong, or that your point is right or wrong, but with as strong a statement as you made in point #2, you should cite references - even if only so that others can be aware of the situation.

I think the point is that it's very expensive to keep people in prison, much more so than giving a homeless person a meal. You have to provide a very solidly built, if not large, home for everyone and keep them company 24/7.

during the reagan era, many MH institutions were closed in favor of outpatient care, which largely resulted homelessness for many of the mentally ill. inmate incarceration costs are at least 25k/year -- http://www.uscourts.gov/ttb/may04ttb/costs/index.html

Are the administrators of this program really so incompetent that they can't find a useful task for people to do? Or was the brick example just hyperbole?

Have you ever tried to keep a large group busy at a useful task?

Now add to that the fact that you'd be taking work away from other folks who want to get paid to do it (cf: internships).

Work-fare programs have been attempted to varying degrees in the U.S. (not just for homeless). The trouble is things that work for city-states like Singapore, don't scale to U.S. size.

This can be said for many things Singapore does. Its quite possible these type of social services simply do not scale well and it would be best if local governments "owned" these problems as they do sewage, water, fire department, etc... But in a multi-tier government: local, state, federal, you can most always kick the problem up a level.

The U.S. had something like that way back in the Great Depression: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration

Suggest that the following would be better wording, as it expresses the same point without emotionally charged turns of phrase like "spend more on murderers" and "those with mental illness roaming our streets":

2. It is unfortunate that we seem willing to spend more money punishing the criminally insane than we do helping nonviolent folk with mental illness, who make up much of our homeless population.

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